Why use a VPN for Android TV boxes?

Continuing my series on keeping your TV box secure when you’re streaming movies, I want to address some frequently asked questions about Android VPN’s, or Virtual Private Networks. What is a VPN? How secure are they? And why use a VPN for Android TV boxes anyway?

What is a VPN?

So what is a VPN? That’s a question that people are asking more and more lately. And with good reason.

I’m not going to get into the technical details. If you’re interested in that, I’m sure there are lots of sites where you can get your nerd on. 🙂

Think of a VPN like a direct link to get from your device (computer, smartphone, TV box, etc.) to another server anywhere in the world. Many people use them professionally for logging in to their work network when working from home. VPN’s are, by definition, private which makes them popular for the professional road-warrior and remote worker.

Even if you’re not using it for work, VPN’s are still popular because they provide a greater level of anonymity than local connections. Think of a “local connection” as plugging your computer directly in to your router or cable modem. Basically, there’s nothing between you and your Internet provider.

The trouble with most local connections is that they essentially provide a big, flashing red beacon to your location to anyone who wants to know.

Don’t believe me? Check out IP-Tracker.org, which is one of many free sites which provide geo-tracking services based solely on your IP address.

Image credit: NYC.gov

What is a VPN?: An llustration

The best way I can think of to conceptually explain a VPN is to think of a huge underground tunnel, like this one in New York City. It’s so big, you can stand up in it and still feel small. That’s the Internet. That tunnel carries lots of “water”, but it’s not secure at all. The water, i.e. your data, can seep through the cracks or get contaminated from other things.

See those pipes on the left hand side? Those pipes go directly to one destination, and it’s very difficult for anything to get in or out of those pipes that doesn’t belong there. They’re used for things that are more important than the dirty water that’s running down the center of the tunnel. The stuff in those pipes (whatever it is), can’t risk being polluted by outside contaminants. In our example, those pipes are a VPN.

Both a VPN and your local Internet connection will get you to where you want to go. But a VPN makes sure that your data doesn’t get intercepted or polluted along the way.

Why use a VPN for Android TV boxes?

There are a couple of important reasons to use a VPN. At a high-level, you’re either looking to protect yourself or get around restrictions that someone else has put on your Internet activity. Even though we only use our TV boxes for streaming and maybe downloading torrents, you should still consider getting an Android VPN for your TV box.

Privacy

It’s hard to think back to a time when we didn’t have to worry about privacy. Long before “Big Data” was a household phrase, our right to privacy was being assaulted on a daily basis. From traffic cameras to browser cookies, it seems we are giving up more and more of our personal information every day. Many people start thinking about using a VPN in the hopes of keeping some of that private information to themselves.

Anonymity

Anonymity goes hand-in-hand with privacy, but there are some important distinctions. You can think of Privacy as keeping control over your personal information. Anonymity is deliberately hiding, or obscuring, who you are. We can all take simple steps to anonymity, and most of us do. For example, I have a separate junk email address with a fake name and information. Parents with small children will sometimes create fake personas for their online or gaming activity. Why do we do this? Because marketers are getting more and more savvy, and learning more about us as consumers every day.

Nothing can make us truly anonymous on the Internet. But a good, secure VPN can go a long way to help.

Security

VPN’s were originally designed to provide a secure connection to another network. As I said before, I use one when I’m working from home. My hardware VPN connects to my wireless router. When my work PC is within range, it automatically connects to the hardware VPN device and accesses my network at the office. To me, it’s just like I’m sitting at my desk.

You’re probably thinking: “Great…but this doesn’t affect me at all.”

Well, when’s the last time you connected to a public Wi-Fi?

Public Wi-Fi connections are hotspots (pun intended) for hackers and digital thieves. Using an Android VPN whenever you connect to public Wi-Fi is a great way to protect yourself.

Geo filtering

This probably won’t come as a surprise to you, but big media companies have put limits on what we can watch based on where we live.

Some of the more common reasons they do this is to control access to certain shows so that some countries get it sooner than others. The BBC was one of the bigger culprits of this in recent years. Some series would air in the UK a full season before they aired in the US.

If you’re more of a sports fan, then geo filtering has probably already affected you.

Think of the last time you wanted to watch your favorite team but couldn’t because the game was blacked out. Personally, this is my biggest reason for getting a VPN. If the game I want is blacked out in my local area (or country), I can hop on a different server and bypass those restrictions. Game on!

Legality

Let me be blunt: If you’re using one of the unofficial (and probably illegal) Kodi addons to stream your movies, and you’re not already using a VPN for Kodi, then you’re a fool.

I’m not here to judge your streaming habits – I don’t care. Right now, it seems that streaming is OK, but downloading is not. But that can change at any time. Personally I wouldn’t put much faith in the loophole that streaming movies through Kodi is legal, as long as the files aren’t downloaded to your system.

Box sellers have already been shut down and arrested. The odds may be in your favor right now, but is that a chance you really want to take?

Important things to consider

Now that you’ve got a little bit of background on virtual private networks, I want to get some caveats out of the way. I think it’s important to understand my perspective so you can decide for yourself whether you want to take my advice. If you agree with how I’m looking at things, then keep reading. If not, you’re free to say that “this guy is nuts” and stop reading. My feelings won’t be hurt. 🙂

I’m Not a “Privacy Guy”

As strange as it might be for some people to believe, I’m not using a VPN because I’m concerned about privacy.

I’ve never cared to read George Orwell’s Ninteen-Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.

I don’t look at all of the dystopian movies like Hunger Games or Minority Report and immediately get up in arms about a “Big Brother” style of government that is watching my every move.

Personally, I’ve got more important things to worry about.

In the most recent study I could find, Americans use 18MB of data every single minute of the day. In my day job, I’m an analyst for a Fortune-100 company.

I see the benefits of using data to make people’s lives easier, more relevant and more connected – not just to their devices, but to each other.

You may take your privacy very, very seriously. That’s OK, and I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t. But, please understand going forward, that’s not how I’m going to look at things.

Geo filtering and Freedom of Information

I may not care too much about privacy, but I believe very strongly in freedom of information.

The Internet was founded to share ideas across the world. But today, information is kept locked away behind man-made walls – only accessible to certain people.

To be clear, I’m not saying that everything should be “free” on the Internet. This is not an excuse for piracy. But, I believe that information that is available in one place in the world should be available in every place in the world.

It doesn’t matter if it is a political paper speaking out about an oppressive government, or a television show that can only be accessed in one particular country. Information should be accessible to everyone.

VPN Affiliates

I want to say a couple quick words about affiliates, because you’ll see it a lot with VPN’s.

Most sites will use affiliate links, including mine. This can be OK or it can be a huge conflict of interests. It all depends on how the site handles it.

Affiliate links are a way for website owners to actually cover the costs of operating a site.

Affiliate sales don’t cost you anything extra as the consumer, but the owner of the site gets a small commission based on any sales that they refer.

In theory, you only put affiliate links for things that you’ve actually used and are honestly recommending. Sites that want to be honest with their readers will disclose that up front.

That’s why on this site, there is a full disclosure page, as well as a brief affiliate disclosure at the bottom of every single page on the site. Go ahead. Scroll all the way down. I’ll wait. 🙂

Where this can go bad is if sites recommend things based on how much it will pay out and then call it a “review”. If you Google “VPN” you’ll see that the search results are littered with fake review sites that are nothing more than sales pages.

Use caution when you’re looking at these so-called VPN reviews. Look at the article and make sure that it reads like a review, not like a sleazy sales page.

So what Android VPN do I recommend?

This is the point in most of the articles that you’ll come across where the author will give his or her recommendations. “Here is the VPN that will solve all your problems”….blah blah blah.

I do have a recommendation, but it could change in the future. I’m starting this process, just like you are. To be honest, before I wrote this article, I’d only used one VPN and, while it was satisfactory, I think I can do better.

Most importantly, I’ve built this site on your trust. You…my readers. You’re the reason I’m doing this – writing articles every week, trying to pass on what I’ve learned and help you avoid some of the more common mistakes.

If I came out and gave a “”recommendation”” based on what made me the most money, I’d be just as dishonest as all of the other affiliate marketers out there.

You deserve better.

So I’m inviting you on this journey with me.

There are about six VPN for Android TV box services that I’ve got my eye on, and I’ll be testing those over the next few months. I’ll give a little write up on each and link to it below.

More importantly, there are some Android VPN providers that I have written off right away. My next article will go into why I won’t even consider some of the most popular VPN services out there – and neither should you.

Reader Interactions

Comments

So far, I am finding ExpressVPN to be the tool that meets my requirements. It is among the most expensive of the VPN products/plans I reviewed. However, it does allow for three simultaneous connections (any device type), ability to choose servers, and has a 30-day money back guarantee if not satisfied.

The only problem I have with it right now is the Netflix proxy blocking, which I spent considerable time with support trying to resolve to no avail. Incidentally, this issue is supposed on ExpressVPN, which was among the reasons I chose this vendor.

I also use ExpressVPN. I use it mainly on my IPOD and Cell when out and about and using open WIFI
Have no idea how to set it up for Kodi. Also to access programs on Acorn TV(paid subscription) that are nor available in my region.

I use paid vpn from zenmate & have it installed on 2x android box, 2x pc, 1x laptop, 3x smartphones & 3x tablets all on 1 subscription and to sate have no issues. I use for both security & privacy living in Turkey but wanting to watch uk tv etc. & buy online.

NordVPN is the service I am using. Can’t remember exactly what I paid but it was certainly less than $40 for the full year. Sale prices seem to appear periodically, ha ha. NordVPN also allows me to have multiple connections at the same time. My PC, my Android TV box and our cells phones can be connected and operational and each can have a different server if desired.

When it comes to the number of countries and the number of servers they have in each location all I can say is it seems to be a BUNCH. I have tried many different countries and many different servers and all seem to work well. However 99% of the time I only use U.S. servers.

When I first started using NordVPN one thing bugged me. The visual interfaces for PC’s is different the the visual interface for Android devices. They both serve the same purpose but the two different interfaces took a few days to get used to. I guess if you like playing online games there is probably a reason for the difference.

I would rate Customer Service as excellent. I have communicated via email and by online chat several times. They respond quickly to emails and their chat client seems to work fine. They do provide a separate “anywhere” function for android devices which I guess serve the gaming community; however, since I don’t play games I can’t provide any feedback in that area.

So am I satisfied? I would say yes, I feel like I am getting value for my money. The servers I have attached to all seem to work well and are not overloaded. In other words; their servers don’t seem to slow down or hinder my ability to stream stuff.

But remember, there are probably hundreds of reasons for using a VPN service besides streaming a movie. I would definitely consider things like online banking and bill paying as a mandatory VPN services even though a secure socket layer supposedly exists. Oh and before I forget, for individuals using a Windows PC for streaming, VPN comes built in to many versions of Windows including Windows 10. Its free and it works but i personally found it a little clumsy to set up – but it does work.

Thomas I have had Nord for about a month now and generally agree with your assessment. The only thing that I have found is that it does slow my internet down a bit, ( about 10mbps). I did pay $48 us for 12 months so found that quite reasonable. I know I also saw it for 40% off to Kodi users after I had already joined.

You can try what I did. I opened an online chat with NordVPN and asked the tech if he could recommend a specific server number NEAR my area for the purpose of streaming. The tech did give me a specific server number to use and it did seem to make some difference the one time I did try it. But normally I don’t pay any attention to that kind of stuff since between my 50 Mbps service and the NordVPN servers I use; it all just seems to work. After all, for 1080P resolution I believe you can get along just fine with good solid 10 Megabit connection. I normally sit about 10′ from my flat panel so I can’t really tell the difference between that resolution and 720P. I use 720P so I don’t have to worry about staying within my Suddenllink data cap.

I’ve been using ExpressVPN for about a year and I am very happy with how it works, most important to me is I have no lag (slow down) with my internet connection .I only had one problem some months back and it was quickly resolved with online chat.

I have recently bought a year’s subscription to IpVanish. Subsequently I read that the NSA (and other global snooping agencies) can crack VPNs which use PPTP or L2TP protocols. I therefore opted for OpenVPN (UDP) protocol. What are your thoughts Tim?

Hi Rob. As I said, I’m not looking at a VPN for privacy reasons. Personally, I believe that if the NSA, or any other government agency, wanted to see what I was doing then there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. The most a VPN will do it deter any of the casual snoopers out there. If a target is too hard, they’ll move on to someone easier.

I am in the process of choosing a VPN provider. Speed is always an issue and there is a website ( vpnify.me ) that has speed tests for a variety of providers. The tests shows the speeds relative to the provider’s services on a global map. Another point… Does the provider keep logs? If this is critical to you, it is my understanding that, by law, all US based providers must keep logs. There are a couple providers based in Panama where log keeping is not required. Two weeks ago I had never heard of VPN and, over the last 5 years I’ve experienced 4 credit card fraud attempts and had to change my card numbers… I will have a VPN provider soon.

Hi all, the thing I noticed about VPN’s is internet speed. I have done speed tests with my VPN on, and my VPN off. With the VPN off, my speed is as it should be, 100 mgb and usually running between 90 and 100 mgb’s (if that’s the proper term? I’m not very savvy with the term’s), and then when I checked my speed with the VPN on, my speed was in some tests only 1.2 mgb, gig’s, whichever is correct, and some tests were between 8 and 20 mgb’s. which isn’t good for buffering. My question is, ‘why does my speed drop down so greatly, and how do I remedy the speed thing when using a vpn??? Thanks for your time and advice.

Hi Cal. Unfortunately, every VPN is going to slow down your connection speed just by how it works. Yes, there are occasions where this doesn’t hold true, but those cases are few and far between. If you keep with my analogy of the subway tunnel above, the VPN creates a smaller, more secure tunnel so that it can transfer data. That tunnel runs inside the bigger tunnel, so it sacrifices a bit of speed for security.

But if you’re getting between 8Mbps and 20Mps, that’s still more than enough for HD streaming (5Mbps minimum). And remember, the VPN only creates the tunnel for the device it’s on, not every device on your network unless you install it on the router.

I agree with a lot of things that you said here. Definitely why VPN is important to me. I’m new to using it so I’m still reading around and understanding how stuff works vs what I need it for. I tried Astrill VPN, they’re pretty affordable and fast, not what I was expecting when I signed up at first. Hope to read!

I’ve been following your pages and appreciate all the information you pass on. I’m a relative newbie to all this but I have learned enough now to have my Kodi program on my computer and have it hooked to my tv. My question about VPNs is that I see you saying vpn for android boxes, does this also mean the same for my home computer??

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